How The Developer Actually Changed Crash Bandicoot For The N. Sane Trilogy

The trilogy remake of the first three Crash Bandicoot games from the PlayStation One has become a smash hit success on the PS4 in the form of Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. The developers revealed, however, that some changes had to be made to the animal with an attitude for today's generation of gamer.

In a blog post on the official Activision website, Vicarious Visions staff expressed gratitude for all the love and support (and sales) that gamers have sent its way. The post goes on to explain that everyone recognizes that the old games weren't easy and neither is the new one.

According to Vicarious Visions, some changes had to be made to reduce multiple "points of frustration" while also maintaining the integrity and vision of the levels created in the original trilogy.

One of the big topics of contention amongst the gaming audience was that Crash jumps differently in Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy compared to his jumping physics in the original PSX version of Crash Bandicoot, creating a very different kind of platforming experience. Crash, for instance, in the newer remakes falls faster than he did in the original PSX version. Vicarious Visions apparently used the physics from the third game, Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped as the starting basis for the physics for Crash, and then slightly tweaked him for each of the three games included in N. Sane Trilogy.

The post also goes on to explain that due to the way the Unity game engine is built, it obviously has a core set of differences between how Crash handled in the original PlayStation games and how he handles in the newer remakes for the PlayStation 4. The post does confirm that there were a lot of iterations made and a lot of changes that had to be tweaked and modified in order to make the game both fun and as faithful to the original games as possible.

However, the post does later go on to say that due to the changes made in the way Crash handles and the updated game engine used to remake the title, and the way the hitboxes have been modified, the original Crash Bandicoot in Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy requires "increased precision".

So, what's the fix for this problem? Vicarious Visions actually suggests starting the N. Sane Trilogy with Crash Bandicoot 2 or Crash Bandicoot 3 in order to get acclimated to the physics and adjust to the difficulty curve in the games before tackling the original. It's no shock that the original game is actually the hardest of the three, which was revealed during a sitdown at the E3 Coliseum this year, hosted by Geoff Keighley. The original design team from Naughty Dog talked about how the game wasn't designed to be balanced but designed to be finished.

Deadlines, new technology, difficult technology, and limited funds all contributed to the original Crash Bandicoot on the PSX being more of a labor than a labor of love. The former team members admitted that they didn't really know what they were doing, they were just trying to get the game finished and out of the door and that's why it was so hard. PS4 chief architect Mark Cerny and Sony executive Shuhei Yoshida had advised them back during the play-testing of the original game that many of the levels were literally unplayable and that there would need to be some tweaks made before going gold.

So, if there's any takeaway from the difficulty and changes made to Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, it's that at least it's not as hard as the original game before Cerny and Yoshida play-tested it.